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The Most Famous

HISTORIANS from Estonia

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This page contains a list of the greatest Estonian Historians. The pantheon dataset contains 339 Historians, 2 of which were born in Estonia. This makes Estonia the birth place of the 36th most number of Historians behind Hungary and Mexico.

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Estonian Historians of all time. This list of famous Estonian Historians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

Photo of Aleksey Shakhmatov

1. Aleksey Shakhmatov (1864 - 1920)

With an HPI of 47.39, Aleksey Shakhmatov is the most famous Estonian Historian.  His biography has been translated into 20 different languages on wikipedia.

Aleksey Aleksandrovich Shakhmatov (Russian: Алексе́й Алекса́ндрович Ша́хматов, 17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1864 – 16 August 1920) was a Russian philologist and historian credited with laying the foundations for the science of textology. Shakhmatov held the title of Doctor of Russian language and philology (since 1894). He was a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (before 1917 the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences) since 1899 and a chair of the Department of Russian language and philology of the Academy of Sciences (1908–1920), a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party (1905) and the Russian Empire State Council (1906–1911).

Photo of Peeter Järvelaid

2. Peeter Järvelaid (1957 - )

With an HPI of 35.32, Peeter Järvelaid is the 2nd most famous Estonian Historian.  His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Peeter Järvelaid (born 28 November 1957) is an Estonian legal scholar and historian. Järvelaid is a professor in the University of Tallinn. He has developed semiotic and personality-centered research direction, writing hundreds of articles mostly about the European and Estonian legal history and education, published in Estonian, English, German, French, Russian, Latvian, Finnish, Lithuanian and Swedish. Since 2006 his studies have been increasingly concentrated on the international relations in the 20th century, which among others has required intensive archival researches in German and Polish archives. Since 2012 Järvelaid has placed his research emphasis on the German diplomatic missions, with a specific interest in German diplomatic representation in Tallinn.

Pantheon has 2 people classified as historians born between 1864 and 1957. Of these 2, 1 (50.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living historians include Peeter Järvelaid. The most famous deceased historians include Aleksey Shakhmatov. As of April 2022, 1 new historians have been added to Pantheon including Peeter Järvelaid.

Living Historians

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Deceased Historians

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Newly Added Historians (2022)

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